National Association for
Rights Protection and Advocacy

NARPA Statement on the Arizona Shooting --
February 8, 2011

The National Association for Rights
Protection and Advocacy grieves with the families of all who are
affected by the tragedy in Tucson. It is natural to look for
meaning in these events and to explain them in terms that will allow
us to prevent them in the future. In the aftermath of events people
could not control, there is a frantic search to regain control: gun
control, increased control of people with psychiatric disabilities,
anything to persuade us that these events will never happen again.
Responses based on involuntary treatment of people with psychiatric
disabilities are misguided and reflect wishful thinking; mental
illness is not a predictor of violence. In addition, these types of
responses engage in generalizations and stereotypes that may damage
and destroy the lives of people whose conduct never has and never
will bear any resemblance to that of Jared Loughner.

We join with those who place responsibility for the murders
in Tucson squarely on the shooter himself. The “mental health
system,” cannot be tasked with impossible predictions of future
behavior and levels of social control that are neither possible nor
desirable. Arizona has a legal standard for which commitment to a
mental hospital has minimal criteria. However, in Arizona as in all
states in this country, people who behave bizarrely cannot, without
more, lose their liberty. This is not something to regret: it is the
foundation of freedom and personal responsibility. At NARPA, we
neither approve the use of mental illness as a reason to broadly
restrain liberty, nor do we approve of the use of mental illness as
an excuse for criminal conduct. The National Association for Rights
Protection and Advocacy stands for the principle of individual
choice. People with disabilities should have individual choices;
they should have those choices respected, and they should, as
individuals, live with the consequences of their choices.
Generalizations about “the mentally ill” are not helpful in the
aftermath of the tragedy in Tucson.